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This pioneering site is where new journalism meets oral history. It contains fresh and archive long-form audio interviews with interesting people, largely uncut and free to the user for non-commercial use. Please also visit our extensive archive of print and photo posts at the main Generalist site here.

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Thursday, July 19. 2007

Expect the unexpected. When I arrive at Jonathon Green’s London flat for our 2pm interview appointment it is to find that taping is virtually impossible due to the fact that two men with angle grinders are cutting up a set of large metal water tanks on the roof of the apartment block opposite – and making a searing din in the process. We were both flummoxed as to what to do but decided to sit it out. Three hours later, after several coffees and much catching up with each other, the grinders clocked off at 5pm. We had outlasted them and were then able to capture the following bravura interview.

Jonathon is one of the world’s leading lexicographers of slang – a subject which is of endless fascination. Over the last 25 years, he has published numerous dictionaries and other related books on the subject but his meisterwork is the yet-to-be published, as-yet-untitled, 3-volume slang dictionary which will be the most detailed book of its kind ever published.

What makes it so special is not only it’s huge extent - it will contain some 100,000 headwords, accompanied and underpinned by more than half a million citations.

He and his partner Susie Ford have tried to supply for each word or phrase, and for each alternative meaning of that word or phrase, a citation in every decade from the word’s first use to the present day.

To see an example of their work - that Jonathon has given exclusively to The Generalist - go to our main site here:http://hqinfo.blogspot.com

Jonathon is hopeful that his dictionary will be published in 2009. It will also be available on-line and he and Susie will continue to update it ad infinitum. Dictionaries in the digital age are never completed but always evolving.

Mention is made throughout the interview of Jonathon’s book ‘Chasing the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made.’ [Jonathon Cape 1996/Pimlico 1997]. The full history of all the main characters mentioned in the interview can be found there.